Laura Adams Armer

Laura May Adams was born in Sacramento, California, and relocated with her family to San Francisco before 1880. Her father was a carpenter and her mother a dressmaker. In 1893 she began her art studies at the California School of Design in the Mark Hopkins Institute and left in 1899 to open her own photographic studio in the Flood Building. She achieved rapid success as a portrait photographer, published her theories on composing studies for the camera, and exhibited with great acclaim at the San Francisco Sketch Club (1900); California State Fair (1901–02); New York Camera Club (1901); Photographic Salons of San Francisco (1901-Second Prize; 1902–03); Starr King Fraternity in Oakland (1902); and San Francisco Art Association (1903). In February 1902 she sold her studio to Berkeley photographer Adelaide Hanscom and traveled in the Southwest with her fiancé Sidney Armer.

The couple married that July and in 1903 moved to Berkeley for the birth of their son, Austin. The pace of her exhibitions accelerated with a display at the Oakland Art Fund of her bookplate designs and prints, which Anne Brigman called "exquisite", and contributions to the American Photographic Salons in New York City and Washington, D.C.Camera Craft, 10, 1905, p. 229.The Washington Post, January 15, 1905, p. 4-2 She returned from a trip to Tahiti in October 1905 and shortly thereafter her infant daughter died. She emerged from a short retirement in late 1906 and became an active exhibiting member of the Berkeley art colony. She also exhibited on the Monterey Peninsula and vacationed in Carmel with Anne Brigman. Laura won a silver medal at Seattle's Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in 1909 and began to experiment with color photography in her popular Berkeley studio.

A turning point in her career came in 1919–20 when she began to document systematically the Hopi and Navajo of the Southwest, which resulted in numerous publications on their societies, art (especially sand paintings), and folklore, as well as hundreds of photographs and the film The Mountain Chant (1928).

Armer's children's book Waterless Mountain tells the story of a Navajo boy called Younger Brother and was illustrated by both Armer and her husband. The book won the Newbery Medal in 1932. Another of her children's books, The Forest Pool, was named a Caldecott Honor Book in 1939.Bily, Cynthia A. (2007) "Laura Adams Armer." Guide to Literary Masters & Their Works, January.

Armer died in Sacramento on March 16, 1963, at the age of 89.{{cite news |title=Laura Adams Armer Dies In Sacramento |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/eureka-humboldt-standard/131321346/ |access-date=September 6, 2023 |work=Eureka Humboldt Standard |date=March 21, 1963}}

File:Illustration from Leaves from an Argonaut's note book.png

File:Elderly Chinese American Man with Queue b.jpg, photographed in Chinatown by Armer.]]

Armer's photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown (c. 1900) are in the collection of the California Historical Society of San Francisco.{{cite book|last=Lee|first=Anthony W.|title=Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco|url=https://archive.org/details/picturingchinato0000leea|url-access=registration|year=2001|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-22592-3|pages=[https://archive.org/details/picturingchinato0000leea/page/135 135]–}} Her photos of the American Southwest are in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico.[http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/palmquist/Essay1.htm Peter Palmquist, "Laura May (Adams) Armer (active 1899-1930's)"], in 100 Years of California Photography by Women: 1850–1950. Retrieved March 22, 2013. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120228201121/http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/palmquist/Essay1.htm|date=28 February 2012}}

• {{cite book|last=Armer|first=Laura Adams|title=Waterless Mountain|url=https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20181220|year=1931|publisher=Longmans, Green}}
• {{cite book|last=Armer|first=Laura Adams|title=Dark Circle of Branches|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9bQqAAAAYAAJ|year=1933|publisher=Longman, Green}}
• {{cite book|last=Armer|first=Laura Adams|title=In Navajo Land|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4G7XAAAAMAAJ|year=1962|publisher=D. McKay Company}}
• {{cite book|last=Armer|first=Laura Adams|title=Southwest|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ubgqAAAAYAAJ|year=1935|publisher=Longmans, Green and Co.}}
• {{cite book|last=Armer|first=Laura Adams|title=The trader's children|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sBMpAQAAIAAJ|year=1937|publisher=Longmans, Green and co.}}
• {{cite book|last=Armer|first=Laura Adams|title=Farthest West ... Illustrated by Sidney Armer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hp_6MgEACAAJ|year=1938|publisher=Longmans, Green & Co.}}
• {{cite book|last=Armer|first=Laura Adams|title=The Forest Pool|year=1938|publisher=Longmans, Green & Co.}}

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• {{FadedPage|id=Armer, Laura Adams|name=Laura Adams Armer|author=yes}}
• [https://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/Palmquist/Photographers/ArmerEssay.htm "The Picture Possibilities of Photography"], a 1900 essay by Armer, hosted by the Women in Photography Archive at Purdue University.
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=bzeHhAwuM6UC&pg=PA52 Newbery Winner 1932]. The Newbery Companion. Retrieved July 6, 2006.
• [http://womenoutwest.blogspot.com/2014/10/laura-adams-armer-painter-photographer.html Laura Adams Armer: Painter, Photographer, Writer, and Filmmaker], article in Women Out West: Art on the Edge of America

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{{succession box|title=Newbery Medal winner|before=Elizabeth Coatsworth|after=Elizabeth Foreman Lewis|years=1932}}

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Category:1874 births

Category:1963 deaths

Category:American children's writers

Category:American women children's writers

Category:American women film producers

Category:American women photographers

Category:Artists from Sacramento, California

Category:Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area

Category:Film producers from California

Category:History of the San Francisco Bay Area

Category:Newbery Medal winners

Category:Photographers from California

Category:Writers from Sacramento, California

Category:Writers from San Francisco